Our family has lived in a small town in Alabama since I began my dental practice in 1993. As our family grew to five with three birth children, we made the decision to begin homeschooling in 2005. In April of 2010, our twin daughters were placed in our home; their new forever family. We love being together as a family and our favorite family activities center around one element: water! From tubing to fishing, swimming to water skiing, boogie boarding to water parks, our family is happiest when dripping wet!
Jenny and I have been involved working with children since our teenage years. When we got married adoption was never ruled out, but we were not planning on adopting either. After we got married, we had three birth children fairly close together and began praying about having a fourth child. Because of the demands of three young children, neither of us was very keen on the idea of having more children at the time. When Jenny began having problems that required a hysterectomy, we felt that God was answering our prayers by limiting the size of our family. Over the years as life became easier, with the children growing older and maturing, we began to prayerfully consider expanding our family through adoption. We began to seriously feel the Lord calling us to adopt, and so we decided together to take GPS classes to establish our eligibility for adoption. We decided to adopt through the State as opposed to private or foreign adoptions for several reasons. While we would have loved adopting a newborn or an infant, the age difference for the new baby and our birth children would have been 6-8 years, and we felt that we didn’t want to keep a baby from a couple who couldn’t conceive. With foreign adoption, extended out of the country visits would have been required, and the travel, coupled with the expense, helped solidify our decision to go with domestic adoption. The final question we faced with beginning our adoption process was single or sibling adoption; this was never an issue. Both Jenny and I were open to both, but ended up feeling most led to a sibling group because it gives your adopted child an invaluable connection to the past while allowing them a chance at a better future.
While the decision to begin the adoption process was mine and Jenny’s, we were very open and proactive in including our birth children in the entire process. As with anything foreign or unfamiliar, the children were naturally apprehensive, but were never against our decision. We made sure to include them in family prayer times concerning our adoption decisions throughout the whole process.
Prior to the placement, we received counseling through APAC as a family. We prayed, had open family discussions about the process, and had our church family pray with us. When the twins first arrived, our new family definitely experienced a “honeymoon period” the first few months. As we all became more accustomed to our new family and routine, the challenges began for all of us, but especially for our birth daughter who is exactly nine months older than our twins. As a family, we received counseling from APAC in our home during the placement period prior to the official adoption. The counselor gave our family a wonderful outlet for voicing concerns, asking questions and seeking advice and encouragement. Our counselor was phenomenal at comforting and encouraging everyone, but she really connected well with our birth daughter and really helped her process. Now, the majority of our issues are simply normal sibling conflict.
With each of the twins we have dealt with separate issues during the time since the adoption. One of the twins has a personality that lends itself to easy adaptability and has been “all in” from the beginning. The other twin has struggled with having an older sister, and with identifying her new role as just a sibling and no longer as the protector of her twin. She has struggled with some jealousy towards her older sister which we believe stems from wishing she was born into our family. Both our birth daughter and this twin have strong giftings of leadership, and thus, at times, there is a struggle for control. The girls still have some adjusting to do, but things are much better now than a year ago.
Overall, the birth children have really embraced the twins as new siblings. The twins have really become engrafted more into the family, and have become less exclusive in their relationship with one another. The relationships and connections between our children are more fluid as time goes on; one day these two siblings are “joined at the hip” and the next day, “the deck” gets shuffled. Isolation, within our family, is now only by choice. We realized how well the twins were adjusting to the rest of the family, and how strong their connections were when they began making choices for the truth and for the betterment of the family, rather than to protect their twin.
The impact of adoption on our family has not been without its challenges, but life is certainly richer and fuller. Because with the adoption we are faced with new issues, adopting has strengthened our marriage with deeper lines of communication with one another. Our boys, who have always been great older brothers, have grown further into their roles as protectors now that they have been given more opportunities to care for their siblings. The twins have helped our oldest son to get out of his “box”, and our second born son, a natural manager, has enjoyed having more siblings to supervise. And while our oldest daughter has had the most adjusting to do, she has risen to the occasion and has developed into a much more mature young lady as a result. With a stable home environment, the twins have blossomed into beautiful little girls with more confidence in themselves, and in their identity as members of our family. In the sixteen months since their placement in our home, they have grown socially, emotionally and physically in leaps and bounds. Adoption has been a true blessing on our home.
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